Tag Archives: V

Didn’t take too long to get some more TV news down the pipeline. Looks like the end for some shows both old and new, and one very annoying countdown clock will be returning:

• After 20 season, Law & Order is ending (the show, not actual law and order). It appears that, despite tepid ratings, NBC was willing to bring the show back for Season 21 because it makes a boatload in syndication, but creator Dick Wolf scoffed at the idea of doing fewer episodes for less money, so the network cut the show. I’m sure that fans are crushed, but don’t worry, there’s still two spin-offs and somewhere in the range of 4000 episodes playing on TNT.
• Chuck will live to fight another day. Fan support has been really strong, as always, and the show will be back for a 13 episode fourth season. That means we can prepare ourselves for another year of wondering whether or not the show will get picked up for a fifth season.
• They’re coming….back. ABC has decided they might as well give V a shot at replacing Lost, renewing the show for a 13 episode second season. Here’s hoping they’ll remind us of that fact by putting a countdown clock to next season in the corner of every show between now and then. (Sidenote: I like that both Chuck and V each got 13 episodes and that that is becoming a trend. Not only is it more cost productive, but it allows the writers to be more focused and have more high quality episodes as opposed to fillers. There’s also the ability of the network to have two different shows in the spring and the fall. This is a good trend.)
• With the renewal of V and ABC’s pick-up of some new shows,* that means they’ve cut a few: Better Off Ted, Scrubs, FlashForward, and Romantically Challenged. The biggest loss there is Better Off Ted, a ridiculously quirky and funny show that oozed with charm. There’s no word yet on whether or not they’ll burn off the few unaired episodes, but here’s hoping they at least make a DVD. As I said before, Scrubs should have ended definitively last season (and probably one or two before that), and FlashForward never lived up to the hype that surrounded it last fall. Romantically Challenged was pretty much doomed to be canceled when they named it Romantically Challenged.

*We haven’t really been reporting on the slew of new shows picked up by networks as we wait for the network upfronts next week. That way, we can get a little more info on some of these shows. Stay tuned until then.